And he looks beautiful.
His hair is shorter than it used to be, and he has some serious stubble going on. I always did love stubble on him. He’s wearing a checkered navy-blue suit with a white shirt. Similar to what he was wearing the first day I met him.
And he looks like everything I ever wanted but never got to have. Not really.
I’m still staring at him. I’m afraid to blink in case this is all a mirage conjured up by my desperate imagination, and he won’t be here when I open my eyes.
Damn air-conditioning dries my eyes, and I blink.
When my eyes open, he’s still here.
“How…where…how?” I’m stammering. I stop and take a deep breath, resting my palm on the counter. The cool top calms me some.
He’s here. He’s really here.
I blow the breath out and look over at him. “How have you been?” My voice is hoarse.
He lifts a shoulder. His eyes are fixed on mine. “You know…” He trails off, not actually answering my question. “You look great, Daisy. Beautiful. But then you always do. And you look like you’re doing well.” He gestures to the shop.
I try not to let the beautiful comment get to me, and instead, I focus on the fact that I get the distinct impression that he knows it’s my coffee shop. How he would know that, I have no clue. But then Kas always did have a way of just knowing things.
“I’m doing okay.” Never got over you. Spent the last three years pining for you. But, aside from that, I’m just peachy.
He smiles. And my heart ruptures.
“How’s Jesse?” he asks.
“Good.” I smile. “He starts university on Monday.”
“Which university?”
“Birmingham.”
“What’s he studying?”
“Law,” I say proudly.
He smiles. “And how’s Cece?”
“She’s great. Why are you here?” The words come out sharper than I intended. But I don’t regret them.
I do want to know why he’s here. Over three years and not a word. And then he just turns up on what has been a hard and emotional day, screwing with my head even more.
There’s a momentary look of surprise in his eyes at my blunt question, but he quickly recovers. “I’m here for you.”
My heart shimmies in my chest. “For me?” I take a breath. “I don’t understand.”
“I think you do.”
“No, I don’t.” I shake my head. “So, you’re going to have to clarify for me.”
And I want him to be specific. Very specific. Because I don’t want to misunderstand a word he’s saying.
My heart broke for him once before, and it never recovered. I don’t want to give myself hope, only for my heart to break a second time.
“I left to ensure that you’d get Jesse back. To give you both a chance at the life you deserved. I stayed away because it was the right thing to do. Jesse needed you. And I was fucked up, Daisy. I was fucked up when you met me. And I wasn’t getting fixed anytime soon. I’d been that way for so long that it was all I knew. Then, it was over. And I was lost. When you’ve lived on revenge for so long and then you have it, you think you should feel amazing. And you do for that brief moment. But then that passes, and you just feel lost. There’s no purpose anymore, just the memories of everything in the past.”
“You had me.” The words come out more broken than I wanted. I wrap protective arms around myself.
He rakes a hand through his short hair. “I wasn’t good for you. I screwed up. I was sinking into a hole, and I would have only brought you down with me. You needed to focus on Jesse. And, for once in my fucked up life, I wanted to do the right thing. And the right thing was for me to walk away.”
“But for three years, Kas…” My words trail off because I don’t know what else to say.
“I took a long time to get to where I needed to be.”
“And where was that?”
“To becoming a man you deserve.”
“And are you?”
His eyes lift to mine. “I don’t think I’ll ever deserve you, Daisy. No man ever could. But I’m closer to getting there than I was before, and I’m done being without you. I waited until Jesse was a man. Able to stand on his own two feet. Now, he’s at university. And I’m back to claim what was always mine.”
“And what if I no longer want you?”
There’s a flash of panic on his face, but he shuts it down a nanosecond later and is back to his ever-confident self. “Then, I hang around and bug the shit out of you with romantic gestures until you love me again.”
“The Kas I knew wasn’t romantic.”
“The Kas you knew was a dick.”
“Kas-hole.”
I grin, and he laughs. I love the sound.
“I don’t know. I kind of liked the old Kas. What if I don’t like this new, improved version?”
“You won’t know until you give him a try…give me a try.” He moves across the shop, coming around the counter, until he’s standing in front of me.
He reaches out and takes ahold of my hand, and I let him.
My skin sizzles, my whole body coming back to life after lying dormant for so long.
“Give me a chance to show you how good life can be with me now. Let me love you. Let me take care of you.”
A flash of my earlier thoughts—about what he’s been doing in all that time he’s spent away from me—cuts into my mind, making me feel cold inside.
I take my hand back from him and wrap my arms around myself again, like a protective shield.